Voyages au pays des maths

The starting point of this episode of our travels in the land of maths: the trivial setting of a supermarket where a vast mathematical plot seems to be unfolding. Thanks to Benford's law, we discover two ways of measuring the world and another way of seeing things.

Speed is such a commonplace notion that we have almost forgotten that it was a mathematical idea. However, three or four centuries ago, speed did not exist... or rather, it was very poorly defined. Behind the complexity of reality, it allows us to discover hidden regularities. Behind the agitation of objects and trajectories, it makes…

In this episode of our travels in the land of maths, we stop in the strange world of topology to decipher the famous Poincaré conjecture. Where we will hear about donuts, circles that are also squares and millions of dollars.

In this episode of our travels in the land of maths, we set course for the Infinite. And even beyond, because infinity exists in several sizes. Vertiginous lands where Georg Kantor and his theory of sets will give us a serious help to find our way.

The starting point of this episode of our travels in the land of maths: the prison. Two prisoners must choose between cooperation and betrayal without consulting each other. This is the famous dilemma that will take us to the heart of game theory and make us think mathematically about a very philosophical question: is it in our…

In this episode, we look at the relationship between math and truth. Math is supposed to be the domain of certainty: either it's provable or it's false. Well, it is not so simple. Because Gödel's theorem proved that there are 'undecidable' propositions, which can neither be proved nor disproved. First limiting…

On the program of this journey: the game of life. A game indeed, but one that allows us to better understand how a complex system can emerge from something simpler. This is called 'emergence' and the story is somewhat reminiscent of the story of our universe. We will also meet different profiles of mathematicians, one of…

This time we go to a much more rugged region than expected: that of numbers. Twenty-five centuries ago, the well-ordered world of natural integers and fractions had to expand to accommodate monsters like pi and v2. A dizzying mathematical expedition where we realize that real life numbers are only the tip of the iceberg.

Irrational numbers no longer hold any secrets for you? Then let's head for a picnic spot that's a bit complicated to reach. It has been known for a long time that some equations have for solutions numbers that do not exist. Fortunately, a flock of mathematicians has discovered a new domain of 'complex' numbers that…

End of the trips to the country of maths with a difficult hike. It is better to be strong on the complex plane. Because it is about an unsolved mystery of mathematics, namely: the distribution of prime numbers. Riemann made a hypothesis considered as valid but still not proven, that is to say that it is not a walk in the park. Let&…